An Autobiographical Narrative and Various Versified Memories 1.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1960s

‘Born on the Goldhawk Road’
Provides a fitting preface
To a long autobiographical piece
Consisting almost entirely
Of versified prose, and linear in nature,
Which is to say,
Beginning with my birth
And leading all the way
To the present day.
Whilst dealing with my earliest years,
It was fashioned only recently.
Although ‘An Autobiographical Narrative”
Has been composed not solely of
Stray pieces of prose
That failed to make the first team.
For it includes
Further versified phenomena,
Such as refugees from the memoir,
‘Rescue of a Rock and Roll Child”,
Which has itself been all but shelved.
The piece itself is a versified version
Of one much reproduced
In various forms throughout my writings,
Although it bears little resemblance
To its original, which first glimpsed
The light of day in around 2002,
As a meagre and mediocre slice of prose,
And while it can still be read
On the World Wide Web,
It’s undergone much modification since then,
Including the alteration
Of all names of people and places
For the solemn purpose of privacy.
Although it was first published
In a form resembling that found below
At the Blogster website,
On the 1st of February 2006,
Born on the Goldhawk Road
I was born at the tail end of the Goldhawk Road
Which runs through Shepherds Bush
Like an artery,
And in the mid 1960s
Served as one of the great centres
Of the London Mod movement,
But I was raised in relative gentility
In a ward of nearby South Acton
Whose vast council estate
Is surely the most formidable
Of the whole of West London.
Although my little suburb
Has since become
One of its most exclusive neighbourhoods.

My first school was a kind of nursery
Held locally on a daily basis
At the private residence
Of one Miss Henrietta Pearson,
And then aged 4 years old,
I joined the exclusive
Lycée Francais du Sud Kensington,
Where I was soon to become bilingual
And almost every race and nationality
Under the sun was to be found
At the Lycée in those days...
And among those who went on to be good pals mine
Were kids of English, French, Jewish, American,
Yugoslavian and Middle Eastern origin.

While my first closest pals were Esther,
The vivacious daughter
Of a Norwegian character actor
And a beautiful Israeli dancer,
And Craig, an English kid like myself
Who became a lifelong friend.
For a time, we formed an unlikely trio:
“Hi kiddy”, was Esther’s sacred greeting
To her blood brother, who’d respond in kind.
But at some stage, I became a problem child,
A disruptive influence in the class,
And a trouble maker in the streets,
An eccentric loon full of madcap fun
And half-deranged imaginativeness.

And my unusual physical appearance
Was enhanced by a striking thinness
And enormous long-lashed blue eyes.
Less charmingly, I was also the kind of
Deliberately malicious little hooligan
Who'd remove some periodical
From a neighbour's letter-box
And then mutilate it before reposting it.
The sixties' famed social and sexual revolution
Was well under way, and yet for all that,
Seminal Pop groups such as the Searchers
And the Dave Clark Five;
Even the Fab Four themselves,
Were quaintly wholesome figures.

And in comparison to what was to come,
They surely fitted in well
In a long vanished England
Of Norman Wisdom pictures;
And the well-spoken presenters
Of the BBC Home Service,
Light Service and World Service,
Of coppers and tanners
And ten bob notes;
And jolly shopkeepers
And window cleaners.
At least that’s how I see it,
Looking back at it all
From almost half a century later.

My third and final school
Was the former Nautical College, Welbourne,
Where at still only twelve years old
I became the youngest kid in the college,
And an official serving officer
In Britain's Royal Naval Reserve.
Founded at the height of the British Empire,
Welbourne still possessed her original title in ’68,
while her headmaster,
A serving officer in the Royal Navy
For some quarter of a century,
Wore his uniform at all times.
However, in ’69,
She was given the name Welbourne College.

While the boys retained their officer status,
And naval discipline continued to be enforced,
With Welbourne serving both
As a military college
And traditional English boarding school.
The Welbourne I knew
Had strong links to the Church of England,
And so was marked by regular
If not daily classes
In what was known as Divinity,
Morning parade ground prayers,
Evening prayers,
And compulsory chapel
On Sunday morning.

Later in life, I felt grateful to her
For the values she’d instilled in me
If only unconsciously, even though,
By the time I joined Welbourne,
These were under siege as never before
By the so-called counterculture.
And in the early 2010s,
I’d insist if I possessed
A single quality that might be termed noble,
Such as patience, or self-mastery
Or consideration of the needs of other people,
Then I'm at least partially indebted
For such a wonderful blessing
To the four precious years I spent at Welbourne.

The previous piece is a versified version
Of a kindred piece yet published at Helium,
And yet improved; and supplemented
By further verses, to the extent that
It bears little resemblance to its original,
Which first glimpsed the light of day
In around 2002,
As a meagre and mediocre slice of prose,
And while it can still be read
On the world wide web,
It’s undergone much modification since then,
Including the alteration
Of all names of people and places
For the solemn purpose of privacy.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1960s

'For all the Beatniks of SF' consists of
Edited and versified extracts
From one of my earliest
Existent pieces of fictional writing.
Dating at an estimate from about 1970,
It reflects the spirit of the times,
Even though it’s been sanitised
For online publication.
In the years immediately following
The revolutionary events of ‘68
I was deeply in sympathy
With the West’s prevailing
Adversary culture
Or alternative Society
Which is very much not the case today.
And my attitude is dictated
Not by increasing maturity,
But by my Christian beliefs,
Without which I might
Be an aging hipster by now,
Blithely festooned
With ostentatious symbols of revolt.

For all the Beatniks of San Francisco

Shirley Brown was a very beautiful girl
And her brunette hair
Hung down her back
And as the wind blew thru the window,
It waved around. It waved around.
She was making sandwiches
And was packing them with fruit
And two massive bars of fruit
And nut chocolate.
She lit a cigarette, picked up the basket
And with a nod of her head,
Waved her hair backwards
And walked out the back door
Into the alley where,
Propped up against a fence
Was a blue mini-moped.
She mounted the bike
And with a little trouble, started it.
And the rider made a sudden jump
As a horn blew behind her
And a leather jacketed youth
Sped by on a butterfly motor-cycle.

People turned away
And the music blared on
And the youths talked on.
Then, a park keeper came
But the youths took no notice.
“What are you kids doing,
The keeper shouted,
I’ve had complaints from all over,
Clear off, wilya,
This is a park
Not a meeting place
For all the Beatniks in San Francisco.

John Hemmings started dancing:
“Cool it, grandpa, get on,
Get going, don’t bug me!”
The kids had gone too far
And they knew it.
Some of them turned away,
As the radio blared even louder,
Litter was scattered everywhere.
“I ain’t chicken of dying,
John Hemmings then said,
We’ve got to go on,
ALL RIGHT! Who are the crumbs
Who want to chicken out at this point,
Just take your bikes and go.
We’re free people now.
Nothing can stop us,
We’ll rule the streets,
The young people will triumph.”
He was perspiring wildly
And his black hair
Hung down his back.
It waved around. It waved around.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1960s

This jackadandy’s original title was
“An Essay Written by a Guy
Who Was Too Lazy to Finish It”
And it dates from
My college days, ca. 1971,
At a time I was yet enamoured
With the hedonistic
Hippie way of life.
It’s been reproduced more or less
Verbatim, notwithstanding
Some minor editing,
And versification.
And I don’t think it’s necessary
To add there is no such cologne
As Monsieur de Gauviché.
As the first title implies,
It was never finished,
But I’ve taken the liberty
Of belatedly turning the protagonist
Into a dandified danger man
Somewhat in the mould
Of Peter Wyngarde’s
Stylishly overdressed secret agent
From the classic television series,
“Department S” and “Jason King”.

Englishman, Jackadandy, Spy

He made no move at all
As the alarm clock went off.
But ten minutes later,
It was obvious he was awake.
He lifted himself out of bed
And went towards the bathroom.
He shaved himself
With a Gillette Techmatic
After having sploshed himself
With a double handful
Of icy cold water.
He washed again, dried his face,
Put on some Monsieur de Gauviché
And got dressed.
He wore a Brutus shirt,
A Tonik suit and a pair of
Shiny brown boots.
He was six foot two
And he smoked sixty Players
Medium Navy Cut cigarettes
A day and he lit each one
With a Ronson lighter.
His name was Titus Hardin,
And he had the biggest
Wardrobe in London.

He was a fair-haired man
And very good-looking.
He was thirty two years old
And a bachelor,
And lived near Richmond, Surrey.
He was immaculate,
Wore long sideboards
And a long moustache,
And his hair was shortish
And well-combed.
His shirt was light blue
And he wore a dark blue tie.
He wore two rings on each hand.
He washed himself
After his usual breakfast
Of toast, black coffee and health pills.
He cleaned his teeth thoroughly,
Put some more cologne on
And then went to do
His isometrics.
His name was Titus Hardin,
And he had the biggest
Wardrobe in London.

He was born in London in 1940.
He went to Eton and Oxford,
Had taught at Oxford for eight years
But was sacked.
He had been an Oxford Rowing Blue
And got a degree in English, Art and History.
His father was Lord Alfred Hardin, M.P.
Titus loved teaching
And not many people know the reason
For his dismissal at the age of thirty one.
He was nearly expelled from Eton
For smoking, drinking,
And being head of a secret society
With secret oaths, but he was
Too promising a sportsman
And all the boys respected him
As a prefect.
He was a fair-haired man
And very good-looking.
He was thirty two years old
And a bachelor,
And lived near Richmond, Surrey.
His flat was beautifully furnished.
His name was Titus Hardin,
And he had the biggest wardrobe in London.

An Autobiographical Narrative 4: 1970s

‘To See You at Every Time of Day’
Is a song lyric, penned in 2003,
But heavily based on one composed
Almost certainly in 1974,
And which I originally sang
In a voice I stole from Bryan Ferry,
Who’d begun his career
As a conventional Glam Rock icon,
But who by ’74,
Had reinvented himself as an old-style
Crooner cum matinee idol,
And it was his eccentric version of
‘These Foolish Things’
That was the direct inspiration
For the lyric in question
Indeed the song as a whole.

To See You Every Time of Day

To see you in the morning
Be with you in the evening
To see you here
At every time of day
Such a simple prayer
To see you at every time of day

To hold you when you’re laughing
Console you when you’re crying
Take care of you
At every time of day
Such a simple prayer
To see you at every time of day

So tell me why you push me away
When I’ve sworn to be forever true
When I’ve pledged
My pure and simple heart to you?
How can you be so cruel?

To see you in the morning]
Be with you in the evening
To see you here
At every time of day
Such a simple prayer
To see you at every time of day.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1980s

‘Nineteen Eighty Tell Me’
Has been reproduced more or less
As it was originally scrawled
In a red Silvine memo book
In the very summer of 1980

Almost certainly as I was waiting
To go on as Mustardseed the Fairy
During the London run of a much-praised
Bristol Old Vic production
Of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’.

Nineteen Eighty Tell Me

Nineteen Eighty, tell me,
Where are you?
What are you trying to be?
This week, you’re 1963
And there’s even
Talk of a rebirth of ‘67
But that’s next week.
Nineteen Eighty, tell me,

When will you be mine?
A little bit ’59,
I’ll not share you with a Beatnik
Take a rest after the exertions,
Punk revolutions,
Before our old friend,
Sweet nostalgia,
Goes round the bend.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1980s

1.

Thanks to the large quantity
Of notes I committed to paper
While at Leftfield College, London,
My beloved college can live again
Through sundry writings
Painstakingly forged out of them,
Such as the poetic pieces that follow,
Which is to say, ‘Some Sad Dark Secret’,
‘Sabrina’s Solar Plexus’,
‘She Dear One that Followed Me’
And ‘I Hate Those Long, Long Spaces’.
And as in the case of all
My memoir-based writings,
The names of people and institutions
Have been changed
In the solemn name of privacy.

2.

‘Some Sad Dark Secret’ was inspired
By words once spoken to me
By a former tutor and mentor
Of mine at Leftfield in around 1982 or ’83.
And which then ended up
As informal diary notes
On a piece of scrap paper,
Consisting of both
The words themselves,
And my own perhaps
Partly fantastical
Reflections on them.
Some quarter of a century later,
They were edited and versified,
And then the process was repeated
A half decade or so after that.

3.

'I Hate Those Long, Long Spaces'
Was recently conceived
From thoughts confided to a notebook
Sometime between 1981 and '83
While I was a student
At the University of London.

As I see it, they betoken
An undiagnosed depressive condition
Which ultimately led to my contracting
A serious drinking problem,
And ultimately some kind of crack-up,
From which I emerged while not unscathed

Another man entirely,
And while I'm still the victim
Of a depressive condition, it's not as it was,
Which is to say, one alleviated
By spells of great elation,
And yet fundamentally rooted in desperation.

Today, it's seen by its sufferer as long term
Yet temporal, to be dispelled,
Once he comes into a new glorious body,
Which is his hope and his prayer,
So all the sicknesses of the old,
Will be a thing of the past, never to return again.

Some Sad Dark Secret

‘Temper your enthusiasm,
She said,
The extremes of your reactions;
You should have
A more conventional frame
On which to hang
Your unconventionality.’
‘Don’t push people,
She said,
You make yourself vulnerable’.

She told me not to rhapsodise,
That it would be difficult,
Impossible, perhaps,
For me to harness my dynamism.
The tone of my work,
She said,
Is often a little dubious.
She said
She thought
That there was something wrong.

That I’m hiding
Some sad
Dark secret from the world.
‘Temper your enthusiasm,
She said,
The extremes of your reactions;
You should have
A more conventional frame
On which to hang
Your unconventionality.’

Sabrina's Solar Plexus

"You were frightening, sinister,
You put everything into it
I took a step back
You get better every time
How good can you get?"

People are scared of fish eyes
They confuse, stun, fascinate
Coldly indifferent
Fish eyes
Sucked dry of life fish eyes...

Sabrina was unselfish,
Unselfconscious,
Devoted, unabashed,
Spontaneous,
A purring lioness:
"Yes, she said,
I can imagine people
Wanting to possess you."

People are scared of fish eyes;
They confuse, stun, fascinate;
Coldly indifferent
Fish eyes;
Sucked dry of life fish eyes...

Sabrina said: "I’m sorry;
I’m just possessive
I’m frightened of my feelings
You’ll miss me a little,
Won’t you?
You should read Lenz.
I’m sure you’d
Identify
With the main character."

People are scared of fish eyes;
They confuse, stun, fascinate;
Coldly indifferent
Fish eyes;
Sucked dry of life fish eyes.

Have I written about the
Crack-up?
When I came home
Empty-handed
And I just couldn’t
Articulate
For latent tears.
But am I so repelled
By intimacy?
When will someone
Get me there (the solar
Plexus) as Sabrina said.

People are scared of fish eyes;
They confuse, stun, fascinate;
Coldly indifferent
Fish eyes;
Sucked dry of life fish eyes.

"You look beautiful;
I wish you didn’t,
Malignant
Flim Flam Man."
"I like it when you really feel
Something;
But then it’s so rare."

People are scared of fish eyes;
They confuse, stun, fascinate;
Coldly indifferent
Fish eyes;
Sucked dry of life fish eyes.

She Dear One Who Followed Me

It was she, bless her,
who followed me...
she'd been crying...
she's too good for me,
that's for sure...
"Your friends
are too good to you...
it makes me sick
to see them...
you don't really give...
you indulge in conversation,
but your mind
is always elsewhere,
ticking over.
You could hurt me,
you know...
You are a Don Juan,
so much.
Like him, you have
no desires...
I think you have
deep fears...
There's something so...so...
in your look.
It's not that
you're empty...
but that there is
an omnipresent sadness
about you, a fatality...”

I Hate Those Long Long Spaces

I hate those long, long spaces
Between meals and drinks
Specifically the afternoon
And after midnight.

I hate mornings too
Until I can smell the bacon
And coffee. I cheer up
Towards the end of the afternoon,

But my euphoria stops short
Of my final cup of tea.
I sink into another state of gloom
Until my second favourite time of the day.

My favourite is that of my
First drink and cigarette.
I hate those long, long spaces,
Specifically the afternoon and after midnight.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1980s

‘An Aphoristic Self-Portrait’
Was expeditiously versified
In September 2011,
Using a series of teeming
Informal diary entries
Made in various
Receptacles in the late 1980s.
And as such may provide
Some kind of indication
As to my psychological
And spiritual condition
Some half a dozen
Or so years prior to my
Damascene conversion.

An Aphoristic Self-Portrait

As a writer, people are my vocation.
As for humanity, men, women
And other abstractions,
Their interests constitute little more
Than my hobby; I can only deal in people.
As soon as I start dealing in sects
And sections, I am either an insider
Or an outsider, and I feel lost as either…
And as soon as I feel lost,
I make no attempt to find myself,
But simply retrace my steps
And return to the people.
You can call me detached if you like,
But you see, the only way
I can remain sane as a person
With such an all-consuming instinct
For attachment, is to be detached…
The world of subjectivity
Holds no sway over me,
Because it is paradoxically impersonal,
Being affiliated to partisanship,
Sentimental causes and other such abstractions.
I couldn’t possibly belong
To a school of orthodox thought
That accepted me as a member.
I don’t believe in myself
Other than as a crystal clear container
For the freshest cream of human individualism.
When I was younger,
I ached to be famous for the sake of it,
But now it occurs to me
That anyone can be famous
Provided they are sufficiently audacious
And thick-skinned, and I desire fame
Not so much for the vain satisfaction
Of being seen and known and heard,
But in order to guide others
Towards a happier way of being,
The only precept for celebrity,
Indeed for being in general, as far as I can see.
Adversity seems to be my fate,
As well as fortune.
The meek ones gravitate to me.
I’m the prince of the hurt ones,
The damaged ones.
I resent all success and authority.
I’m so affectionate one moment,
So icy and evasive the next.
I’m in love with many people at present.
I over accentuate my individuality,
Because sometimes I look at myself
In the mirror and I say:
‘Who’s that pathetic wreck?’
The more complex you are,
The less you like yourself,
Because you frighten yourself.
The more I find myself liking someone,
The more I doubt us both.
Liking someone negates them for me.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1990s

‘The Loonie’s Last Reckoning’,
Based largely on events that took place
On the 16th of January 1993,
Was initially an adaptation
Of an autobiographical fragment
Possibly penned around 1996,
Which was then edited, reassembled
And versified for publication
As ‘Remnants from Writings Destroyed 1’
At the Blogster website
On the 10th of March 2006.
While in time, it was incorporated
Into an early version of the memoir,
‘Rescue of a Rock and Roll Child’
Known as ‘Spawn of the Swinging Sixties’.
Only to be unearthed in late 2011,
And wedded to a versified translation
Of notes made probably around 1992,
Shortly before the events
In question took place,
And then awarded a striking new title.

The Loonie’s Last Reckoning

It was late in the afternoon
Of The 16th of January 1993
That my whole
Intoxicated universe
Finally exploded

Drink me one day = 10 vodkas
7 1/2 pints 14 wines
1 bottle of wine + 6 gins + 4 pints
Or 2 bottles of wine + halfs then 4 pints
Or bottle of wine + 5 pints +
Cans and shorts.
Saw myself as a loonie
Of the Lunatic Underground

It was late in the afternoon
Of The 16th of January 1993
That my whole
Intoxicated universe
Finally exploded.

Five + Two = Seven Units By 11.30
12.30 = Six Units 1.30 = 5+2 = Five
Units
6.30 = Four Units 7.30 = 3+2 = Five
Units
8.30 = 4+1 = Five
Units
12.30 = Free
Saw myself as a loonie
Of the Lunatic Underground

It was late in the afternoon
Of The 16th of January 1993
That my whole
Intoxicated universe
Finally exploded

Broken at last
With etiolated face...
Tremulous hands,
After so many years
Of semi-Icaran hubris

It was late in the afternoon
Of The 16th of January 1993
That my whole
Intoxicated universe
Finally exploded.